Kobalt Bosses Willard Ahdritz and Laurent Hubert Talk Today's Billion-Dollar Catalog Deal, and What's Next - NewsBreak

It hardly came as a surprise, but Kobalt's second giant catalog sale in less than a year made headlines on Tuesday morning when the company announced that KKR, together with its co-investor, Dundee Partners, purchased the KMR Music Royalties II portfolio for a whopping $1.1 billion — even more than the billion the company was said to be seeking. Included in that 62,000-copyright catalog are hits by the Weeknd, Lorde, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Max Martin collaborator Shellback, Glassnote Records master recordings and its Insieme music publishing division, and more. This follows a deal last November that saw the...